Thursday, April 24, 2008

Hispaniola (from Spanish, La Española) is the second-largest and most populous island of the Antilles, lying between the islands of Cuba to the west, and Puerto Rico to the east. It is located directly within the hurricane belt. The Republic of Haiti occupies the western third and the Dominican Republic the eastern two-thirds of the island. Christopher Columbus arrived in Hispaniola on December 5, 1492, and on his second voyage in 1493 founded the first Spanish colony in the New World on it.

Names of the island

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and Bartolomé de las Casas documented that the island was called Haití ("Mountainous Land") by the Taíno inhabitants. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera added another name, Quizqueia (now "Quisqueya"). The term "Quizqueia" had been used only by d'Anghiera and the word has been verified to not have an Arawak structure.

Even if Haití is a Taíno name used by the three historians, it seems that it was not the Taíno name of the island. Haití was the Taíno name of a region in northeastern Dominican Republic (now known as Los Haitises). In the oldest map of the island, made by Andrés de Morales, that region is named Montes de Haití ("Haiti Mountains"). Las Casas wrote that the whole island took the name from that region;d'Anghiera said that the name of one part was given to the whole island.

The three historians wrote always Haití because at that time they didn't use the letter "J" (just like Haina - Jaina), and the last "i" was stressed. It is not correct to use Ayiti; that is a modern word taken from the Haitian Creole language.

When Columbus took possession of the island, he named it as La Española, meaning "The Spanish (Island)". When d'Anghiera wrote in Latin about this island, he translated the name as Hispaniola, a new word. Because Anghiera's literary work was translated into English and French in a short period of time, the name "Hispaniola" is the most frequently used term in English-speaking countries regarding the island in scientific and cartographic works.

The terms Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo are sometimes still applied when referring to the whole island when both names factually refer to their respective countries

History

Christopher Columbus arrived on the island during his first voyage to America in 1492. During his arrival he founded the settlement of La Navidad on the north coast of present day Haiti. On his return the subsequent year, following the disbandment of La Navidad, Columbus quickly founded a second settlement farther east in present day Dominican Republic, La Isabela, which became the first permanent European settlement in the Americas

The island was inhabited by the Tainos, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples. The Taino were at first tolerant of Columbus and his crew, and helped him to construct Fort Navidad on what is now Môle Saint-Nicolas, Haiti, in December 1492. European colonization of the island began earnestly the following year, when 1,300 men arrived from Spain under the watch of Bartolomeo Columbus. In 1496 the town of Nueva Isabela was founded.

After being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas. The Taino population of the island was rapidly decimated, owing to a combination of disease and harsh treatment by Spanish overlords. In 1501, the colony began to import African slaves, believing them more capable of performing physical labor.

As Spain conquered new regions on the mainland of the Americas, its interest in Hispaniola waned, and the colony's population grew slowly. By the early 17th century, the island and its smaller neighbors (notably Tortuga) became regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the king of Spain ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to avoid interaction with pirates. Rather than secure the island, however, this resulted in French, English and Dutch pirates establishing bases on the now-abandoned north and west coasts of the island.

In 1665, French colonization of the island was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. The French colony was given the name Saint-Domingue. In the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain formally ceded the western third of the island to France. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the east in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles," it became the richest and most prosperous colony in the West Indies, and became the most important port in the New World for goods and products flowing to and from Europe

Geography

Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba), with an area of 76,480 km². The island of Cuba lies 80 km to the northwest across the Windward Passage; to the southwest lies Jamaica, separated by the Jamaica Channel. Puerto Rico lies east of Hispaniola across the Mona Passage. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands lie to the north.Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico are collectively known as the Greater Antilles. The Greater Antilles are made up of continental rock, as distinct from the Lesser Antilles, which are mostly young volcanic or coral islands.

The island has five major mountain ranges: The Central Range, known in the Dominican Republic as the Cordillera Central, spans the central part of the island, extending from the south coast of the Dominican Republic into northwestern Haiti, where it is known as the Massif du Nord. This mountain range boasts the highest peak in the Antilles, Pico Duarte at 3,087 meters (10,128 ft) above sea level. The Cordillera Septentrional runs parallel to the Central Range across the northern end of the Dominican Republic, extending into the Atlantic Ocean as the Samaná Peninsula. The Cordillera Central and Cordillera Septentrional are separated by the lowlands of the Cibao Valley and the Atlantic coastal plains, which extend westward into Haiti as the Plaine du Nord (Northern Plain). The lowest of the ranges is the Cordillera Oriental, in the eastern part of the country.

The Sierra de Neiba rises in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, and continues northwest into Haiti, parallel to the Cordillera Central, as the Montagnes Noires, Chaîne des Matheux and the Montagnes du Trou d'Eau. The Plateau Central lies between the Massif du Nord and the Montagnes Noires, and the Plaine de l'Artibonite lies between the Montagnes Noires and the Chaîne des Matheux, opening westward toward the Gulf of Gonâve.

The southern range begins in the southwestern most Dominican Republic as the Sierra de Bahoruco, and extends west into Haiti as the Massif de la Selle and the Massif de la Hotte, which form the mountainous spine of Haiti's southern peninsula. Pic de la Selle is the highest peak in the southern range and the second highest peak in the Antilles and consequently the highest point in Haiti, at 2,680 meters (8,793 ft) above sea level. A depression runs parallel to the southern range, between the southern range and the Chaîne des Matheux-Sierra de Neiba. It is known as the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac in Haiti, and Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince lies at its western end. The depression is home to a chain of salty lakes, including Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic

Ecology

The climate of Hispaniola is generally humid and tropical. The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to 2100 meters elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above 850 meters elevation. The Enriquillo wetlands are a flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion that surround a chain of lakes and lagoons that includes Lake Enriquillo, Rincón Lagoon, and Lake Caballero in the Dominican Republic and Lake Azuei and Trou Caïman in Haiti.